This seems to be a common approach based on google searches, and the recommended workaround from GRADLE-1445.

After upgrading to gradle 3.0, the explodedWar task does not inherit any of the task dependencies of the war task. Executing the task on its own performs the expected copy actions, but does not depend on any of the other build tasks which produce class files, resources, etc. Is this expected behaviour?

A simple work around exists, that is to add explicit dependencies to the exploded war task as in: